“Double, double toil and trouble”– these four trochees constitute the first line of the famous witches’ chant in Act IV, scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth”. Shakespeare’s Scottish play relates the story of a married couple, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, who strive after political power for the sake of power itself. Lady Macbeth’s desire for power was so strong that she urged her husband to assassinate the king. In the end, both she and Macbeth himself were destroyed by their evil deeds, and the witches portended their demise in the well-known chant: “Double, double toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble.” After destroying her political rival, Lady Clinton was plagued with guilt and eventually went completely mad. Did I say Lady Clinton? Of course, I meant Lady Macbeth! That a bad conscience might drive a modern politician into utter madness is quite unthinkable! Shakespeare was writing in a period of history in which there were still moral standards in society and in which individuals could still be destroyed by the guilt of their misdeeds. In contrast, we live in a period virtually devoid of moral values, a period in which any twinge of guilt is quickly dismissed as a useless emotion. So the perpetration of misdeeds in the political realm today is more likely to result in trouble for society as a whole rather than for the perpetrators themselves.
In this election cycle, media trouble stands out as a particularly vivid example. As soon as it became apparent to the mainstream media that Bernie Sanders was a real threat to Hillary Clinton, the bias of the media became painfully clear to every observer. Long before the voting was conclusive, the New York Times had crowned Hillary the democratic nominee of the presidential race. Similarly, the bias of the media was apparent when it set out to discredit Donald Trump in every possible way. Try as one may, one has great difficulty in finding anything positive written about Trump in the mainstream media. In recent weeks, the reporting on these three candidates has been so incredibly predictable that I have found it difficult to read the comments of the pundits. Day after day, the message has been the same: Hillary is the legitimate heir to the throne, Trump is a disgusting bigot and racist, and Sanders is simply a nuisance.
After I wrote my last article “A Matter of Judgment” in which I criticized the record of Hillary Clinton, I tried to post the article on the Facebook site of The Villages Democratic Club, a closed Facebook group of which I was at the time a member. Since this Club is a closed group, submitted posts are either approved or rejected by the administrators of the site. I submitted my post the day before the democratic primary in Wisconsin, and at that time, the Club site was filled with glowing comments about Hillary Clinton. Thinking that a diversity of opinion would be welcomed by democrats, I eagerly awaited a response. But twenty-four hours passed with no response. So I wrote the Club a note stating that the tacit rejection of my article did not strike me as very democratic. To this, I also received no response. Media trouble–a biased media that suppresses the diversity of opinion which is necessary for the democratic process. (As a footnote, I would like to add that the Villages-News.com has never rejected one of my articles, although I am certain that the staff has not always agreed with my opinions.)
There is, however, another aspect to the current media trouble. Although the mainstream media has always been biased to some extent, the situation today has noticeably worsened. When I was a child, the city where I lived had two locally owned newspapers, and it was well known that one newspaper favored the Republicans, the other the Democrats. By reading both papers, my parents were able to form a better opinion about critical political and social issues. Unfortunately, the consolidation of media in the States has changed this situation drastically. Newspapers as well as other media outlets are now owned by huge corporations that no longer feel obligated to report the facts accurately. Whereas the locally owned media tended to present different interpretations of the same facts, the corporate media takes the liberty of presenting different facts. Even if we disagree on the meaning of certain facts, we can still conduct effective political dialogue about the facts themselves, but if we are assuming a different set of facts in the discussion, fruitful exchange becomes almost impossible. Take, for instance, the recent interview aired on CNN in which Anderson Cooper questioned Florida’s Attorney General Pam Bondi on same-sex marriage. If one watches the CNN video clip of the interview and compares it with the response of Pam Bondi on Fox News, one finds it very difficult to ascertain the facts. We are not just confronted with different interpretations of the same facts, but with different facts, and this discrepancy leaves us with very little basis for discussion. Media trouble!
If my assessment of the current political situation is correct, the worst media trouble is yet to come. During this presidential campaign, both establishment parties have witnessed the influence of the internet on the political process. It is true that the Clintons have been able to control and manipulate the mainstream media to a great extent, but Bernie Sanders and his supporters have demonstrated beyond any doubt that the flow of information on the web makes possible an effective political campaign based on small donations. This is not a situation favorable to establishment politics, and the need for corrective measures seems obvious. Therefore, I will venture a prediction. If an establishment candidate like Hillary Clinton is elected President of the United States, we can expect the new administration to support measures to control the internet and to limit its effectiveness in the political process. The internet in its present state allows the citizens of our country a far greater voice in politics that the Washington elites can tolerate. “Double, double toil and trouble”, but the trouble is going to be for us, the citizens of this country, not for Lady Clinton.
Jack Brush is a Villager and author of “In Search of the Common Good: Guideposts for Concerned Citizens.” Learn more at www.jackebrush.com
